H. It must be very pleasant.  But it must make Boston seem a little slow when you are at home.

G.S.  Yes, of course it does.  But I don’t go home much.  There’s no life there—­little to feed a man’s higher nature.  Boston’s very narrow, you know.  She doesn’t know it, and you couldn’t convince her of it—­so I say nothing when I’m there:  where’s the use?  Yes, Boston is very narrow, but she has such a good opinion of herself that she can’t see it.  A man who has traveled as much as I have, and seen as much of the world, sees it plain enough, but he can’t cure it, you know, so the best is to leave it and seek a sphere which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture.  I run across there, one a year, perhaps, when I have nothing important on hand, but I’m very soon back again.  I spend my time in Europe.

H. I see.  You map out your plans and ...

G.S.  No, excuse me.  I don’t map out any plans.  I simply follow the inclination of the day.  I am limited by no ties, no requirements, I am not bound in any way.  I am too old a traveler to hamper myself with deliberate purposes.  I am simply a traveler—­an inveterate traveler—­a man of the world, in a word—­I can call myself by no other name.  I do not say, “I am going here, or I am going there”—­I say nothing at all, I only act.  For instance, next week you may find me the guest of a grandee of Spain, or you may find me off for Venice, or flitting toward Dresden.  I shall probably go to Egypt presently; friends will say to friends, “He is at the Nile cataracts”—­and at that very moment they will be surprised to learn that I’m away off yonder in India somewhere.  I am a constant surprise to people.  They are always saying, “Yes, he was in Jerusalem when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he is now.”

Presently the Grandson rose to leave—­discovered he had an appointment with some Emperor, perhaps.  He did his graces over again:  gripped me with one talon, at arm’s-length, pressed his hat against his stomach with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, murmuring: 

“Pleasure, ’m sure; great pleasure, ’m sure.  Wish you much success.”

Then he removed his gracious presence.  It is a great and solemn thing to have a grandfather.

I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but compassion.  One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum.  I have tried to repeat this lad’s very words; if I have failed anywhere I have at least not failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said.  He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of Young America I came across during my foreign tramping.  I have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures.  The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five or six times as an “old traveler,” and as many as three times (with a serene complacency which was maddening) as a “man of the world.”  There was something very delicious about his leaving Boston to her “narrowness,” unreproved and uninstructed.